scruss's diary

Recent diary entries

My name is a problem. Not merely is my first name often misspelled (and, where I now live, almost universally mispronounced) it's often assumed to be my family name. While it's pretty common for Scottish guys to go by their middle name, since they'll often have the same first name as their father¹, my first name really is my given name. It's just my luck that my family name is more common as a first name. Also, my name is really long; with my middle name, it's too long for Canada's ID system, so I have an “official” name² that's my real name minus a letter or two. I should just add LLC on the end and be my own legal partnership. Hence, it's a lot easier to go by my nickname.

A friend's rather odd quest to see how many of his Facebook friends had their names mentioned in Milwaukee streets led to me creating a list derived from OSM data³ for him. That got me wondering further: is there a city in the world where Stewart Street/Road/Avenue/… intersects with Russell Road/Street/Avenue/…?

Before I get preemptively banned from Overpass Turbo for life for thinking up the most futile way to heat up a server, I'll probably never do this. If I did, I should probably just look in New Zealand⁴, because it often seems — in place names, at least — to be more Scottish than Scotland.

¹: This can make lowland Scottish genealogy an interesting challenge. I think I've got something like five consecutive generations of Roberts marrying Agneses in my ancestry; imaginative we ain't. I do have to keep reminding myself that my lot were the ones who didn't have the get-up-and-go to become hillbillies.

²: no, I'm not getting all Freemen-on-the-Land nonsense on you here. Just in case you were getting worried.

⁴: My ancestry does have a slightly more Highland branch, of whom I've written here before. My grandfather remembered his grandmother describing seeing the boats leaving to take the Stewarts of Appin to New Zealand during the Clearances.

For years, I knew there was an address hole in OSM along Eglinton Avenue East. Querying Nominatim for an address would often return a location ≥ 5 km away from the real result.

Then came Metrolinx's clean up and import of address ranges. Folks might turn their noses up at address ranges, but at least ranges give you a location within a few metres without adding millions of nodes. This is good enough for Metrolinx's commuters, and improves the map.

A couple of days ago, I had to look up an address while mobile on Eglinton East. All I had was my phone with Google Maps. I put in the address, and Google suggested somewhere really far from where I'd expected it to be. Oddly enough, Google was suggesting a location in the general area that OSM always used to return. How nice to know our addresses can be more useful than those provided by a corporate entity!

Strangely enough, it and many others like it in Ontario are tagged as theme parks. Now they might have a midway for a week or so during summer or fall fairs, but the rest of the time, they look like this.

The previously proposed amenity=show_grounds would be better for most of these. The ones that have permanent installations, like Canada's Wonderland, should stay as theme parks, so a little local knowledge is required.

Statistics Canada launched their Crowdsourcing pilot today — based on imports that don't have community approval. The editor page doesn't even work on my browser, so I can report no further. Not a great way to start.

Dropping off a letter in the mailbox at the end of the street, I noticed this sticker was attached:
So that means by the middle of the month my leisurely 400 metre round trip to post letters is going to be over a kilometre, either to Mailbox: Node 705233932 or to the suggested Mailbox: Node 4433576259.

I looked around on the map for more amenity=post_box nodes around me, and found coverage was patchy. Local mapper andrewpmk has done some sterling work adding mailboxes, but there are some neighbourhoods even he can't find time to go into. But there has to be a definitive list of mailbox locations in Canada, somewhere, right?

Wrong: Canada Post does not publish mailbox locations. There's no way of finding a list or map on their website, and Canada Post confirmed to me that “we do not have a map for street letter boxes”. So it looks like we're the only people mapping them, unless there's a list I can get via a Freedom of Information request.

The Lee Lifeson Art Park — dedicated to Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of the band Rush — opened on the weekend. I was in the area yesterday evening, so mapped out a rough version with my phone. I may go back to add in more detail today.

In order to limit its liability, OSM should “… also make sure that their software is running smoothly, and that the visual designs of the sites are clear and informative.” Hmm.

(Incidentally, CIPPIC is also responsible for the excellent-though-depressing CIPPIC Licensing Information Project for Open Licences, CLIPol. If you want to see how not to do open data, take a look at some of the really bad licences they've found. I wonder why so many of the terrible “open” government licences are near me?)

Aww — looks like Google Map Maker is editable again in Canada. It's got some restrictions now, including one that The Great Unwashed can't edit polygons any more (which, in my 'hood at least, means no more polygons nicked wholesale from OSM). But the main new feature is: “Top mappers in your country are now empowered to moderate your edits”. These Regional Leads bless your edits … once they get around to it.

Seems that most of the comments on the Canada forum are of the form “I added my business X months ago, why hasn't it shown up?”

Now, if only there were a thoughtfully moderated alternative to Map Maker out there … ☺

Back in the UK and navigating by OSM on my old 60 CSX, I tried to find a restaurant on West Street. No dice. Seems that the extract assumes that all directions should be modifiers of street names, so poor old West Street becomes W Street, if anything at all.

I dunno what it is about a certain kind of solar power sales person, but they're all about the spam. In trying to find details for tagging solar hot water heaters, I found a couple of no-edit accounts with word-number-word algorithmically-generated names: push36queen and cry3dime

There are probably more.

If you do happen to be looking at how to tag solar hot water, this looks about right: Node: 2671563575

The Power tagging scheme went through quite a bit of thought in 2013. Unfortunately, living on only a couple of OSM mailing lists, I didn't get to see any of the discussion. While most of the suggestions are pretty reasonable (if occasionally requiring improbably levels of system knowledge likely only known to employees) one part confuses me: generator:source vs generator:method.

This is a tidy way of grouping turbines, as many wind farms aren't clearly enclosed. You could have all sorts of roles for transmission lines, control rooms, visitor centres, …

I'm pleased to see that the tagging scheme seems to be informally named after Carland Cross wind farm. Carland Cross was the first wind farm I worked on. Here's a view over to Newquay, as it looked to me in the summer of 1993:

It turns out that mmather's grandfather, and my great-grandfather, were colleagues at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow (now The University of Strathclyde), Scotland. Just recently, my brother found our great-grandfather's hand-written application to become a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers from 1913. There on the page was my great-grandfather's signature — with mmather's grandfather's signature next to it as witness.

MetaFilter user jjjjjjjijjjjjjj would like some help to finish a project to bike down every street in St Louis. Some of the routing logistics seem a little out of reach for jjjjjjjijjjjjjj, and the city's streets could always use a little more love from the OSM community.

I'm way out of town and loaded down with my own projects, but I thought some people here might be interested.

I just mapped Warden Hilltop Community Centre. It has a “green roof” — part of the roof has growing turf, and a trail through it (which would explain how I managed to put a gps trail through the building ☺). How would I tag it?

Back in Scotland for a week, and couldn't be bothered to buy new maps for the Garmin. I thought I'd download TalkyToaster's FREE* British Isles Maps. So far, the roads and routing have been great. The same can't be said of my driving on the other side of the road, though ...